Starring: John Travolta and Nicolas Cage
Directed by: John Woo
When you've seen a dozen preposterous films before breakfast, it's difficult to keep on topping them. However, not only does Face/Off top them in the "that's ridiculous" stakes, it laughs and kicks sandcastles in their collective faces.
Here we go - Cop Travolta is understandably peeved at Cage for blowing away his kid daughter six years ago. Now Cage has set a bomb to blow away LA for some reason or other, but Travolta catches him. Cage almost dies in the process, and lies in hospital wired up to the machine that goes ping. Cage's brother knows where the bomb is, but won't talk. So - and there really is no easy way to put this - a surgeon removes Cage's face, and puts it on Travolta. One microchip in the larynx and a fiddle with the "Cage/Travolta" control sorts out the voice problem, and hey presto! Travolta becomes Cage...
I mean, that's it. I've had it with these films, they may as well have the hero grow wings and fly out of a tricky situation. Maybe this could have worked as sci-fi with some hi-tech molecular technology, but we are offered no such explanation here.
If - if - you can get over this, there is a good deal of fun to be had in the face-swapping plot (exactly how Cage then ends up with Travolta's face is also one for the "huh"? brigade), and the action sequences are very stylish, although nothing new in essence. But it goes on far too long and has a really rather cringe making epilogue, which at least is unintentionally amusing. It seems almost unbelievable that one or two are trying to crown this "best action movie ever". Pur-lease - not even best of the week.
The main problem is that it appears to actually take itself seriously. Anaconda or Congo may be trash, but hell they have fun with it. Other than the ending, there aren't even many laughs to be had here. Face/off? F***/off.
Starring: Paul McGann, Peter O Toole & Harvey Keitel
Directed by: Charles Sturridge
Following on from last year's identically themed Photographing Fairies, this charming tale behind those famous early century photos lays its cards firmly on the table almost from the word go. Fairies exist. They buzz around, getting up to all sorts of misheif. Well, actually they don't do much at all come to think of it. But they are kinda cute, and the two young girls are besotted with them enough to declare the whole thing a Kodak moment.
The photos become the interest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (O Toole) and, more inexplicabaly, Houdini (Keitel), who soon discover the photos appear to be genuine. But any concern that the girls may have outsmarted them all and are being economical with the truth is quelled by the frequent reappearnace of those tiny curiosities.
This is a beautifully made film, and its hard not to warm to the two hugely likeable lead girls. There is much too to enjoy in the lovingly recreated period detail and society, and the Black Hills look really gorgeous. The screenplay is sparse and almost underplayed, but the imaginative direction keeps things entertaining.
This is, of course, as the title says, a true story. All well and good, but one of the children finally confessed to having made the whole thing up when she was 80. Of course, she was quite mad by then...
Starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman & Donald Sutherland
Directed by Gregory Hoblit
DVD Review ****
Routine cop thriller with a far from routine gimmick - the bad guy is a demon who passes from person to person by touch. Creepy atmosphere and strong performances help gloss over the silly premise... until the ending. Then the makers finally go for one twist too many to make any coherant sense, and fall over their own collective jacksy.
Starring: Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Coming after the too-stupid-to-be-true Basic Instinct, here Douglas shows himself still capable of a performance that amounts to more than guffaws of laughter. And this time, no-one has the DA on their back.
D-fens is the car registration plate and now given name of the main man, who abandons his motor on a log-jammed freeway in order to go home to his wife and children on his daughters birthday. It is clear all is not well, however, when his first rest stop involves him smashing up a Korean's store with a baseball bat for trying to charge eighty-five cents for a can of Coke, before buying the drink for a more reasonable fifty. This sets him of on a morally feulled violent rampage, as each stage of his journey is blocked by people who soon discover his crop-top hair sits on a brain very much on the edge. Tracing the trail of destruction is hen-pecked cop Duvall - on the eve of early retirement to Arizona at the behest of his hyper-emotional ex-model wife - who has to find out what is going on before D-fens' estranged wife and tykes welcome daddy home...
What makes this compelling and disturbing is our identification with D-fens' anger. In one memorable scene, a jobsworth manager refuses him breakfast at a burger bar, since it is now two minutes into lunch time. Perhaps pulling a semi-automatic weapon in response is a bit harsh, but wouldn't it be fun? Just once? To counter this unease, Duvall plays his sympathetic character superbly, and enjoys an interestingly close yet probably platonic relationship with his female sidekick which, together with Barbara Hershey's effective portrayal of Douglas' wife, give the film a vital human core. A shame that contrivances had to be injected in the latter part of the otherwise excellent - and surprisingly humorous - script, which take the edge off the drama.
Schumacher injects a lot of visual (and aural) style - the opening set-piece in particular is outstanding stuff. But it is Douglas' face and bewildered reactions to the screwed-up town in which he lives that stay with you after the closing credits have rolled. LA may have the weather, but tourism could take a bit of a knock for those who've sat through this...
Starring: Frances Mc Dormand, William H Macy, Steve Buscemi
Directed by: Joel Coen
DVD Review ***
The reputation of car dealers the world over is safe in the hands of those rascal Coen brothers. Macy - a particularly weasely example of the specimen - schemes to get his wife the victim of a kidnapping scam, in order to get his grubby little mits on some hefty ransom loot, funding his dream of starting a, er, parking lot.
His commitment is beyond doubt, but the execution of the finer details of his plan leave a little to be desired, and the body count rises at the hands of his hired henchmen. Cue the seven months pregnent local sherrif (Mc Dormand), who calmly shuffles around putting her hound like nose firmly on the snow covered scent.
What we have is another entry in the hip 'n violent school of filmaking, but the difference here is that the radical notion that the bad guys are bad, and the good guys good. The Coens are masters of atmosphere, and this has it by the snow plough-full, whilst all the cast do their quirky rural turn a treat. The undoubted star here is Mc Dormand, a quite superb performance (Oscar please) of a wonderfully written character - she's professionally brilliant, but still is unsure of how to dial an outside line from an unfamiliar office in an emergency.
All that said, it has to be said that what the film lacks is a sense of intrigue - one or two developments are shocking (be warned that the violence is gruesome), but rarely surprising. Fargo is a beautifully crafted, well acted tale, which may make you laugh and squirm - but you won't bite your nails.
The Coens claim at the start of the film that all this is based on a true story, and this has been gleefully derided by the world's press. If anyone had botherd to stay to the legal disclaimer at the end of the movie, the truth was actually told right from the beginning all along...
Starring: Billy Crystal and Robin Williams
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Well, this dream ticket billing sadly does little to revive the now ailing careers of two of the 80's most terrific comics. In Fathers' Day, Natassja Kinski tracks down both men independantly, tells them that she bore them a son of which they knew nothing, and they both happily drop everything to find the ghastly teenage brat and get all paternal.
The comedy pedigree in impeccable - directed by Ivan Reitman of Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop et al - and writen by the improbably named Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, themselves responsible for the highly affecting Parenthood and City Slickers. But this, by contrast, is tired and lazy - a thin idea at best not thought through enough to get story or performers far off first base.
As it goes on, it's just not possible to have this team together and produce a few good laughs, and the overall effect is never awful, just lacklustre. As mindless laughs go, it's right there in the middle.
Starring:Colin Firth & Ruth Gemmel
Directed by: David Evans
Three years on, and it's as if Four Weddings never happened. We can do depressing and uncommercial, we can do frocks, and now we can even do hip 'n violent. But the simple pleasures of a well written, well acted comedy have proved elusive for us since Richard Curtis' ink dried.
Fever Pitch, penned by new wunderkind novelist Nick Hornby, is therefore a breath of fresh air - a happy tale of a manic depressive Arsenal fan who turns everyone he meets into "miserable bastards". It's a real credit to the script and Colin Firth's excellent performance that, despite this horrific description, we have a really likeable character, who falls for fellow comprehensive schoolteacher Gemmel. Love changes everything we're told, but, in the classic ballad, no verse specifically refers to overcoming sad childlike obsessions with universally despised football teams.
It's all very small scale - actually looking quite odd on the big screen - but it is delightfully done, with simple scenes and situations brought to life by the autobiographical script and talented cast. Damn it all, if you don't know what happened to Arsenal in the 1988/1989 season, it's even heartstoppingly gripping, as the Gunners slug it out at the top of the table for the first time in 20 years...
But this is not, repeat not, a film for football fans alone. If it's for anyone, it's as much for long suffering friends and lovers of these curious animals. Hornby provides much insight, if ultimately no explanations. Given his talent then, you can only presume that looking for an explanation is a bit of a waste of time.
Starring: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin
Directed by: Fred Schepisi
And so the much troubled so-called "equal" to A Fish Called Wanda finally makes the screen. Same cast, different charaters. And further evidence, if any was needed, that William Goldman was right - no-one knows anything, and thus what worked once, doesn't necessarily work again.
Cleese is a harmless owner of a harmless zoo. Having been recently aquired by a Murdoch-like Kline, the boss duly dispatches his tiresome son - also Kline - and high flier Lee Curtis. Everyone realises a change is in order to increase profitability and thus survive - the workers think that violence sells, so turn every harmless animal into a dangerous beast, while Kline sees sponsorship as the answer, almost obscuring the animal pens with advertising boards.
Occasional flashes of the old magic tantalise you with the promise, but somehow this is a very unfierce creature - and the presence of Ronnie Corbett does little to help. It's all "classic" predictable farce, but firing on only a couple of cylinders. Ironically, the legendarily re-shot last quarter is probably the strongest section, with the film's only decent twist.
Wheras Wanda seemed fresh and invigorating, Creatures shows us Cleese & co slumbering in a cosy chair in the corner, having looked at the vibrant brave new world of British comedy... and decided to put in an old video instead.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mila Jovovovich, Gary Oldman & Ian Holm
Directed by: Luc Besson
The most expensive movie ever filmed in Britain, it says here. Not the most expensive script though, it appears.
It's Judge Dredd without the plot. After a promising wierdy Egyptian prologue involving some pteroglyophs and some very odd looking aliens, we are hurled into 22nd century Manhattan, about to be wiped out - along with the rest of the world - by some generic form of ultimate evil.
It's all got something to do with finding a suitcase full of four "magic stones" and a strange, scantily clad goddess. But in the end, it all boils down to a lot of chasing round a galaxy inhabitied by dull taxi drivers (Willis), dull priests (Holm), dull baddies (Oldman) who employ dull footsoldiers, dull, dull, dull, dull. Oh, we've seen it all before so many times that you can hardly believe that highly respected Besson (Leon, Nikita) was even wandering around the same room as the cast, crew and particularly scriptwriter.
The set design looks like set design, the costumes from Jean Paul Gaultier look like costumes, and the visual effects look like visual effects - for all the hype, it looks like a CD-ROM of Blade Runner on a dry day. As the film limps to its weary conclusion with a camp irritating broadcaster shouting over the carnage, we can only be grateful that much of the obscene amount of money spent on this pile of kack landed on home ground. Now we know why the teaser trailer didn't tell us anything - there was nothing to tell.
Starring: Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline
Directed by: Laurence Kasden
So both Harry and Sally have made it big in France within weeks of each other - Billy Crystal directed his own vehicle Paris Match, and Meg Ryan makes her debut as a producer in this sloppy wet kiss of a film.
"Happily" engaged Ryan has something missing in her life, and before you can say "Sleepless in Seattle" it turns out to be her fiance, since he has fallen head over heals for a local on a business trip in Paris. Determined to break the spell the temptress holds over him and her fear of flying in one fell swoop, she hops on the first available flight out of Toronto and finds herself sitting next to - zut alors! - French con-man Kline. Dropping a diamond necklace into her bag to get himself through customs, he spends time in his home town with mystic Meg - in theory to help her find and woo her man, but in reality to get his grubby paws on that darn jewellry.
From this point on, the film seeks to re-define the word "contrived" as they head south to the Med, drop in on his family and generally fall in lurve. Sadly all this happens without us actually giving two, or even one hoot or hoots, since she is a drippy loser and he a nasty manipulative piece of work. Meg Ryan is really going to have to work hard at re-inventing herself to avoid slipping well out of favour due to over-familiarity, director Kasdan seems to have his mind elsewhere and only the ever-versatile Kilne comes out not reeking of garlic, turning in a plausable - if unmagical - performance.
It's all to nought when the script is as much of a shambles as this, though. How do these things get made, for heavens sake? An intended date movie, the best way to spend French Kiss by a mile is by trying out your own in the back row...
The Frighteners **** (Short Review)
Starring: Michael J Fox
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Fabulously entertaining X-Files-on-speed tale of a spirit hunter (Fox) who, with the help of some friendly ghoulish mates, rids the world of evil. Like a much darker - and funnier - Ghostbusters, this has the same hip & jaded angle that made Men In Black such a joy, but it feels fresh and original in the capable hands of Jackson. Some laugh out loud moments, great effects and a few scary bits. Unfairly and inexplicably overlooked at the box office.
From Dusk till Dawn (short review) **
Starring George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Kietel, Juliette Lewis & Cheech Marin
DIrected by Robert Rodriguez
DVD Review * 1/2
The less interesting side of what happens when you work for years in a video store watching cult movies, this bizarre but-joining of two totally different scripts is high on tastlessness, but low on fun. Two criminals (Clooney - good, Tarantino - hmm), rape, pillage and take hostages in Texas, but meet their match when the topless bar they end up in turns out (and we all saw this one coming) to be run by vampires. Despite some choice dialogue from Tarantino's script and Rodriguez's customary virtuoso editing, it's just too unpleasent to be fun - simmering mysogyny doesn't help - and too stupid to ever really engage. Still, never mind, ay - it's different.
Starring: Robert Carlisle
Directed by: Peter Catanneo
Now this just isn't possible. How can a movie sound worse than Speed 2 on paper, and yet turn out to be damn near perfect?
It's all about five ex-Sheffield steel workers, who see how much money the Chippendales make and decide to have a go themselves. Fine for the hen night audience from hell yes, but for anyone else it's surely worth volunteering yourself for virus testing in order to avoid.
But no. This is an extraordinary film headed by an intelligent script stuffed with pathos and first rate 3D characters, fleshed out in turn by an excellent ensemble cast, and finished with immaculate direction. Nothing is what you'd expect - these are no irritating have-a-go cheeky chappies from up north of Watford, they are a bunch of nearly suicidally depressed men whose self esteem has been devastated by months of unrelenting unemployment. As we learn of their various stories, it seems as if going the full monty is the only sane thing to do.
If that makes it sound like it's full of British dreariness, then that too is well wide of the mark. Moving without being harrowing and affecting without sentimentalism, this is an extraordinary blend of tenderness and raucusness, closer in tone to The Commitments then Striptease. In short, a more sweet natured and warm hearted movie you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere. And it's damn funny. An absolute gem.
All reviews / articles copyright Guy Rowland (1998).